A Place To Hide
by TheCompositionNotebook
Summary: Written for denimgirl1's Room of Requirement challenge. Ginny is quite annoyed, so she sets out on a solitary adventure.


**First of all, this was written for denimgirl1's Room of Requirement challenge!**

**Then, I want to explain this a little. So... you know how in Half Blood Prince (the movie) Ginny just takes Harry to the 'Room of Hidden Things' like she's already been there? And she knows where to go? Well, in this story, she has. And this is her experience. :D But I'm still trying to stick to the book characters... if that makes any sense... I hope it does. **

**Anyways, I hope you guys like it! :D Reviews are good, they make me smile! Try not to favorite without review! But I hope that doesn't dissuade you from favoriting!**

**Anyways. Go read now! :D**

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><p>Ginny walked quickly up the corridor, glancing behind herself every few seconds to make sure she wasn't being followed. She didn't really know where she was going; she just knew that she wanted to get <strong>away. <strong>Get away from** him** and away from everyone else for a while. She was feeling sick of people and just wanted to be alone, but it seemed like everybody in the castle decided that it would be a great day to come and bother her with all sorts of idiotic and trivial things that didn't matter, and that she really didn't care about.

And to make matters worse, Dean had decided that the best way to cheer her up in that moment was to come with her wherever she went and be at her side constantly. That was the thing she wanted least. Even though she had told him quite a few times (at last count it was about five), he insisted that all she needed was some good company to cheer her up. She had finally escaped him by pretending that she had to go to the loo, and exiting the common room when he wasn't looking. And that was why she found herself walking only god knew where to try and get away from it all.

She suddenly found herself on the seventh floor, facing a tapestry she knew all too well. Barnabas the Barmy attempting to teach trolls to dance ballet. She looked at the opposite wall questioningly, thinking about the room hidden behind the blank stretch of wall. Memories of that room from the year before came to her mind, memories of sneaking in there to learn defensive magic in secret. _'Taught by Harry,_' she thought, her stomach doing an odd sort of flop when she thought about him. She shook herself a bit, attempting to focus on the task at hand and push the picture of the dark haired, green eyed boy out of her mind.

She looked at the blank stretch of wall again, and she pondered over the thought of hiding there to get away. She stood there thinking for a few moments, before she suddenly caught sight of a ruffled looking Dean coming down the corridor towards her. He was obviously searching for her, because he was looking in every classroom he passed that didn't currently have a class being taught in it.

She jumped and decided that she needed to get in that hidden room in the next few seconds if she wanted any solitude at all, so she set about thinking of a good place to ask to hide. But Dean was coming nearer, and she panicked slightly and asked simply, "I need somewhere to hide!" She muttered that two more times, and thankfully a door sprung into life before her.

Taking one last look down the corridor at Dean, who had spotted her and was now waving frantically, Ginny threw the door open and quickly stepped inside, turning and closing the door with a loud snap. She leaned her forehead against the cool bricks lining the wall and smiled, pleased that she had found herself a place to hide away from the bustle of the castle for a few hours.

She turned slowly; ready to find out what kind of place she had been given to her for her retreat. And what she saw amazed her. There were stacks and piles and mountains of **things.** Things of all different shapes, sizes, and kinds. Some were broken, some were stained, and some looked like things that just didn't belong. But everything looked interesting. Every single object in that room looked like it had a story behind it, and Ginny found she was unconsciously wondering what had led them all to this room.

She gazed around for a few more minutes, wide eyed and open mouthed, before she actually moved. But she saw something that caught her eye a few rows of things away from herself, and she curiously walked over towards it.

A dark wooden wardrobe sat with one of its doors partially open, and Ginny could just see a bit of purple fabric peeking through. She grasped the ornate handle and tugged it open a bit wider, revealing a whole plethora of different colored robes. She pulled out the purple one she had seen before and looked it over, noticing that a bit of fabric at the bottom had been eaten away by what looked like acid. She fingered the burn marks for a second before pulling the fabric off the hanger and slipping it on, laughing. She was reminded of the times when she was little when she would sneak into her parents' room and try on her mother's robes and jewelry.

Ginny looked around for a second, managing to spot a large mirror leaning precariously up against a stack of chairs. She stepped over to it and looked at herself, turning in a few different directions. She smiled and went back to the wardrobe, pulling out a teal robe with a rip in one sleeve. She changed into that one and went back to look at herself again, noting that the color went rather nicely with her hair. She proceeded to change into a set of awful pink robes, frilly white robes, royal blue ones, and a ridiculous set that were tye-dyed. They each had their own little imperfection. She took off the last set of orange ones that she tried on (they clashed magnificently with her hair), and pulled the set of teal robes back out and put them on. She felt rather fond of them.

She spotted a little cabinet sitting on top of the wardrobe, and she reached up as far as she could to touch it, just managing to grasp the handle and yank it open. She luckily was able to use her Quidditch reflexes to dodge the boxes that came tumbling down and clattered on the floor, a few of the tops popping off and revealing the contents inside. She curiously reached inside the largest box that was sitting near her feet, pulling out a hat that she remembered from a story that her brother had told her of his third year Defense Against the Dark Arts class. She plopped the vulture topped hat on her head and ran back over to the mirror, promptly bursting into laughter at the ridiculous bird perched on her head.

She pulled the hat back off her head and put it back into its box, locating the cover and sticking it back on. She picked the boxes back up to stack them next to the wardrobe, peeking inside and seeing the different hats that had been placed inside. She tried on a few different interesting ones, laughing at them each time she looked into the mirror. As she picked up the last box and peeked into it, she saw a teal colored hat that matched the robes she had put on perfectly. She placed it onto her head as well and stepped over to the mirror again, this time liking the reflection she saw.

"Not bad," Ginny said aloud, straightening the teal hat and robes. She stacked the empty box on top of the others and turned to look around herself again, finally just picking an aisle to walk down. She began to wander through the aisles of hidden things, every now and then objects catching her eye and stopping to examine them. At the end of one aisle, she came upon a large dark cabinet draped in an old looking cloth. She studied the ornate details carved into the wood for a moment before pulling it open. Inside she found a ripe green apple.

"What?" she asked loudly, picking it up and inspecting it. It was a perfectly ripe apple, crisp and firm. She threw it up in the air, satisfied with the noise it made as it connected with her hand again. That meant that someone had to have been in this room in the last few days, unless the strange cabinet was some special fruit preservation chamber. She snorted quietly at that thought.

She reached over to a box sitting a few feet away, seeing a kitchen knife stuck inside. Opening it further, she saw that there were more knives in there than she had originally thought, and they were joined by a few daggers and a broken spear. The spear was covered in a red substance, and she eyed it wearily as she attempted to extract the kitchen knife. She moved over to a stack of crates, placing the apple on the top and beginning to section it. She carefully examined it for a moment once she was done, making sure it wasn't poisoned or anything, before taking a tentative bite. It tasted normally, and Ginny smiled and picked up the rest of the sections, placing them carefully in the pocket of the teal robes.

She went back to the strange cabinet once more, chewing thoughtfully, before shrugging and continuing to explore the mysterious room. She passed large bookshelves full of ripped or damaged books, pulling out a few to inspect them as she passed. Most of them were still readable, and Ginny had the quick thought that Hermione would have been very happy had she been there at that moment. Laughing quietly, she put the hardcover spell book she was holding back on the shelf and continued on, amazed again at the enormous size of the room.

She suddenly came upon something quite tall, covered in a dusty looking sheet. Her curiosity got the best of her, and she grabbed a few handfuls of the material, yanking it down and it falling directly on top of her. She struggled with the cloth for a moment before pushing it off of herself and onto the floor, brushing off the dust that had accumulated in the teal robes.

Finally looking up at what she had uncovered, she screamed and nearly choked on the slice of apple she was eating. She attempted to quickly move backwards away from the thing, but her feet caught on the sheet and she fell into the pile of material. She quickly righted herself and pulled out her wand, but for the first time she noticed that it wasn't moving. It was completely still. And what would it have been doing covered in a sheet anyway?

Slowly moving up to the Mountain Troll, she quickly stuck her foot out and nudged it on the leg, feeling her foot connect solidly. Yet the animal still didn't move. In fact, Ginny realized that it wasn't even breathing. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself down, attempting to let her heart beat go back to normal.

She suddenly understood. The Troll had been stuffed. For whatever reason, some crazy person had decided to get the dead troll stuffed. She marveled for a few moments, wondering who in their right mind would do that. She finally decided to just cover the thing back up with its dusty sheet, not really wishing to stare into its face for too much longer. Ginny pulled a few crates over and stacked them up so that she would be able to reach the trolls head, throwing the sheet over top of it as best as she could.

She hopped back down and took one more glance at the creature under the sheet, before catching her eye on something shining on a shelf a few feet away. Letting her curiosity guide her, she walked over to a shelf full of bottles of all different kinds. Different shapes, sizes, and especially different contents. One or two of them held a suspicious dark red and glutinous looking liquid. She couldn't help but think it might have been blood. She repressed a slight shiver, and pushed those out of the way to see what lay behind them.

Near the back of that shelf, she spotted a rather interesting looking bottle hidden behind a few taller green ones. She plucked it out of its place, and laughed aloud. It held a rolled up piece of parchment. Exactly like how muggles would put them in and set them adrift in the ocean. She uncorked the top with minor difficulties, and magicked the little scroll out. She could just see black ink-marked words through the parchment.

Just as she was beginning to unroll the little paper, a loud screeching noise from off to her left startled her, prompting her to drop the paper in surprise. Looking around, she saw a big black thing with wings swooping down at her head. She reacted quickly; throwing herself out of its line of fire, landing on something hard that poked her in the back. She glanced back up quickly, seeing the little black creature swoop down and pick up the rolled up parchment and fly back off into a different cabinet across the room.

"Wait!" she yelled after it, scrambling to stand up. "I wanted to read that!" She tripped on something while she was standing up, and she nearly lost her balance again. She looked back to find the object she tripped over, and when she finally spotted it, her eyes lit up. A grin spread across her face as she picked it up and examined it. Most things in this room seemed to be hidden here because they were broken, but this seemed perfectly fine.

She hopped on the broomstick and took off, relieved that she was able to fly normally on a broom she found in a room full of broken and damaged things. She did a few maneuvers in the air, pleased to find out that the broom worked almost as well for her as her own broom. She shot off after the little bat, following it to its cabinet in the corner, which was missing a chunk of wood near the top. The bat poked its head out of the hole just as she was landing, almost as if it was mocking her.

"Oh no," she said determinedly as the bat pulled its head back inside. "I'm going to read that parchment." She was perhaps a bit hesitant about opening the door to a bats home, but she grabbed the wooden handle and yanked it open anyways.

The swarm of bats that flew out at her took her completely by surprise. She hit the ground again, for the third time that day. Her elbow screamed in protest from the repeated blow, and she let out a little hiss of pain.

She waited a few more seconds before sitting back up, making sure she stayed out of the way of any lingering bats. She peeked into the cabinet cautiously, and not seeing anything else still moving inside it, she stood up and peered inside. She lit up the tip of her wand to look around, and something inside the cabinet suddenly sparkled so brightly in the wand light that she was forced to blink a few times.

Ginny slowly reached out and grabbed at the shiny object, grasping her fingers around it as delicately as she could. She held a little tiara in her hand, with beautiful gems and engravings on it.

"Wow," she breathed out slowly, examining the little treasure, the scroll of parchment completely forgotten. She picked the broom back up and hopped on it again, flying back to where she had originally found the robes. She stepped over to the mirror she had looked in previously.

Ginny pulled off the teal hat and smoothed her hair down slightly, before slowly reaching up and placing the little tiara on her own head. She admired the silver metal shining against her red hair for a few moments, before she was suddenly hit with a very strange feeling.

At first, she just felt a horrible sense of déjà vu, like there was something that she should remember that she had forgotten, there was something wrong. And then a feeling of pure hatred hit her. She was suddenly so angry that she kicked out at her reflection in the mirror, effectively shattering the glass and sending cracks crawling up that distorted her image. A feeling of horror spread over her then, once she realized what she had done, and she backed away from the now broken mirror slowly, feet crunching over the glass.

Ginny had no idea what had made her do that, she honestly didn't. She was still feeling exceptionally angry, breathing heavily and feeling her pulse racing. She stood fuming for a few seconds before she realized that it must have been the tiara's fault that she was feeling so mad. She attempted to pull it off her head, but it didn't seem to want to move. It had embedded itself in her hair and had turned white hot every time she touched it. She began to panic slightly, feeling the heat against her head and her hand as she tugged fruitlessly, but it wouldn't budge.

She had a sudden idea, and nearly unable to stand the heat radiating off the metal object, she reached into her pocket for her wand and shouted, "Relashio!" The tiara thankfully released its grip and clattered to the floor, where it sat looking as innocent as ever.

She unsteadily walked back over to the broken mirror and looked in it as best as she could, seeing her hair knotted and tangled on the top of her head where the seemingly harmless looking tiara had sat moments before. Ginny cast a charm on her hair to smoothen it back out, and noticed with a great amount of confusion that the white hot temperature hadn't singed it at all. It was looking perfectly normal again. She slowly ran her hands through it, examining the strands of hair that she knew had touched it, before realizing that her hands weren't burned at all either. Even though she distinctly felt them blister under the touch of the hot metal. She caught a glimpse of it in the mirror, and turned to look suspiciously at it.

Ginny stepped over to it and reached out a tentative finger, afraid touching it would set it off again, but the metal remained cool under her touch. She shakily picked it up and looked it over, trying to find out why it had attacked her but unable to see anything special about it. She quickly tapped it with her wand, seeing if it had any hidden qualities. It immediately began glowing with a golden light, and she nearly dropped it. There was something special about it, some hidden power cast upon it. Something decidedly evil.

Ginny looked around for a few seconds, then wound up and threw the tiara as hard as she could in a random direction. She watched with satisfaction as it land in a pile of junk near another kind of cabinet and grinned as she saw it fall down through the junk so that it wasn't visible anymore. She didn't want it to attack anyone else as it had her.

She quickly decided that it was time to leave that room, seeing as things were getting progressively more and more dangerous. Falling, being attacked by bats, then a seemingly harmless tiara. Her desire to leave became quite strong, and she ripped off the robes she had been wearing, stuffing them quickly back into the little wardrobe she found them in. She walked in the direction of the door, but found herself instead by the sheet-covered troll. She tried to find the exit again, but found herself back at the bookshelf.

Becoming more and more panicked, she started walking quicker and quicker, seeing loads of things that may have interested her before that she now just wanted to get away from. She laughed hollowly at the irony, coming here to get away from everything and finding herself wanting nothing more than to get away from that horrible room.

Finally spotting the door out, she ran towards it and flung it back open, sprinting out and shutting it behind her. She walked unsteadily over to the opposite wall, covered in that horrible tapestry, and slid down against it. She watched as the door sank back into the wall slowly, disappearing after a few seconds. She breathed a little sigh of relief.

"Ginny?" a voice asked suddenly from somewhere off to her right. She jumped and then rolled her eyes, expecting it to be Dean. But it wasn't.

"Harry!" she said quickly, jumping up and giving him a brief smile. He looked a bit confused.

"What are you doing up here?" he asked her. Ginny saw him clutching his Invisibility Cloak behind his back. She eyed him a little suspiciously before answering.

"I just needed to get away from everything for a bit. I came up for a bit of alone time," she said, wincing at how unrealistic it sounded. Coming up to a hallway to be alone? Harry just looked more confused. "So what are you doing?" she asked, attempting to switch the conversation. Thankfully, Harry took the new topic.

"Malfoy. He's up to something in the Room of Requirement. And I want to find out what, because I know it can't be anything good."

"Oh," she replied, looking back at the blank stretch off wall. _It would figure, _she thought. _Harry going after who he thought was the bad guy._ She smiled slightly, thinking of all the times he had done. And the time he had saved her life in her first year. But her thoughts were interrupted as Harry began talking again.

"But don't tell anyone what I'm up to, alright? Ron and Hermione are already telling me I'm wasting my time and I shouldn't be up here," he said. "And I don't want to think about what the Slytherins would say."

"Don't worry," Ginny said reassuringly. "When Fred and George are your brothers, you learn how to keep secrets." He smiled at her thankfully and turned to look at the wall. She could almost hear his focus shift from her to the hidden room. She looked at him for a few moments, admiring him slightly, before turning.

"See ya, Harry," she said, beginning to walk away. She heard his slightly mumbled reply, and turned once more to see him running his hand over the wall, a look of deep concentration on his face. She tore her eyes away again and hurried down the hallway, slipping into the first girl's bathroom she came upon. It was thankfully devoid of giggling girls.

She stepped in front of another mirror and looked at her reflection. She spent a great deal of time just standing there and thinking. Thinking about how annoying Dean had been lately. How nice Harry always was. About how she never wanted to enter that room again, as intriguing as it had been. About what type of room Harry wanted to get into.

Little did she know, she would enter that room again, this time with Harry. That this time she would be hiding something, an old potions book there. And little did she know that was the room that Harry so desperately wanted into in the first place.

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><p><strong>Did you like it? I hope so! Tell me! I would love to know what you think! :D<strong>


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